The United Nations Organization has realized the need for every nation across the globe to develop using its own resources. The Millennium Development Goals is a key scheme of the United Nations to empower all nations to develop using their own resources. The scheme aims at assisting nations to realize potential areas of the economy from which revenue can be generated for national development.
National revenue is raised through various ways. These include direct taxes, indirect taxes, royalties, etc. Both the formal and informal sectors of the economy contribute in mobilizing revenue for national development. While the formal sector is well structured to prevent evasion of taxes, the informal sector is not well organized. Various researchers have observed that the revenue generated from the informal sector in Ghana has not been the best.
In critically examining reasons why the informal sector is hard-to- tax, the researcher used Accra, Tema, Ho and adjoining communities with a sample size of 200 informal sector operators. Primary data was mainly used with mostly closed –ended questions and multiple answers provided to limit respondents to choices to select from.
Analysis of data collected established that the factors that make the informal sector hard-to-tax were very high in Ghana as a result of the predominance of cash transactions, poor record keeping, high illiteracy rate, little or no barriers to entry, lack of laid down procedures, ignorance of tax laws and the peripatetic nature of the informal sector in Ghana.
The recommendations of the study included, capacity building, tax information and education, simplicification of filing procedures, improving tax administration and preparing a master list of informal businesses.
It is the hope of the researcher that his findings would contribute to mobilizing revenue from the informal sector in Ghana for national development.

Description:

A Dissertation presented to the Institute of Distance Learning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Commonwealth Executive Master of Business Administration (CEMBA), 2009